Special to Scotland

SIR - Lady Elizabeth Angela Marguerite Bowes-Lyon could almost be forgiven her English birthplace, so strongly did she work her Scottishness.

She was a Caithness laird in her own right, and the longest-serving member of the Order of the Thistle, Scotland's senior order of chivalry. She had her own tartan, Duchess of York. Not that she needed any more tartan than she already used. She would wear up to four separate setts, all cheerfully clashing with each other - headscarf, neck scarf, skirt and coat lining.

The pain of widowhood was somewhat assuaged with her purchase of Barrogill Castle in Scotland's most northerly mainland county. From the renamed Castle of Mey, she engaged the community, becoming patron of Caithness Artists Society and opener of Caithness Agricultural Show.

Summers there took her furthest from protocol and closest to ordinary acts of kindness. A local farmer, driving in his tractor along a tiny road on a pouring wet morning, recalls a drookit little figure trudging along with her hood up. "Can I give you a lift?" he shouted down - and the Queen Mother looked up.

Realising early in life that the best photographs were matters of creation rather than occurrence, she went out of her way to woo the lenses without treading on her dignity. One journalist recalled that when she was presented by the Scottish agricultural press with a crystal vase, "You would have thought it was the first piece of crystal she had ever possessed. Everyone had the chance of a good shot as she picked up the vase, faced to the left, the right, and straight down the room."

Her 1972 visit to a newspaper office in Aberdeen concluded with the presentation of an issue featuring her visit. True trouper, she flourished the newspaper and quite deliberately looked on the back page, thus presenting photographers with a picture both of herself and the front page splashing the news of her visit.

She exuded a warmth that made those who met her feel special. If she didn't know someone, she was adept at creating a connection - a born networker before the term was invented.